Max, the Miracle Dog: The Heart-warming Tale of a Life-Saving Friendship by Kerry Irving. Harper Collins. £12.99

Spaniels always have that miserable, weight-of-the-world-on-their-shoulders kind of look.

The drooping ears and soulful eyes seem to invite sympathy and when the nose is thrust up against an iron gate and the small spaniel seems trapped in a back yard, fewer passers-by can resist turning and giving the dog at least a moment of their time.

For Kerry Irving that moment in Keswick has turned into a life time. Fourteen years ago Kerry was involved in a serious road accident that put an end to his successful business career and an energetic outdoor life-style.

He reckoned he would regularly cycle six hundred miles a month through the Lakes. More significantly, the accident left him house-bound and severely depressed. Trapped, like that spaniel, in a back yard.

It was a chance encounter. In August, 2009, three years after the accident, Kerry’s wife, Angela, persuaded him to get out of the house and make the short walk down the road to the corner shop for a pint of milk.

Kerry said: “I didn’t think I could do it but she made me go. I got to the corner of our road and saw Max’s nose sticking through the railing of a gate.

“I stopped to say hello because I’d had spaniels when I was younger. He looked at me and straight away there was a connection. Stuck in a yard, it was as if he was saying, ‘My life’s pretty rubbish and yours doesn’t look much better’.

From that moment the relationship developed. Kerry went out of the house especially to see the dog. After a few weeks, he talked to the owner, a carer who had little chance to walk the spaniel, Max.

He began to call along to take the dog for a short walk. The dog was a comfort and an excuse. They went 60 feet up the road to a sandstone wall and Kerry was exhausted: “When you have an ailment that people can’t see, but you’re shuffling away and physically gasping, you feel so self-conscious. But with Max, it didn’t matter. We could stop and it was just a man having a rest with his dog.”

It was a real triumph when man and dog walked as far as Derwentwater. Kerry was re-programming his brain. Instead of thinking “I’m in pain. I can’t do anything,” Kerry started thinking “I can get out and do things again.”

And in the ten years since Kerry has gone out and done things again. Max has taken him out on the fells. He has restored his confidence and encouraged him to take photographs of their active life together. They have started a lock-smith’s business – Max is ‘Head of Security’ - and a blog and embarked on raising money for charity, and now they have written a book about the transformation in their lives.

n Max is available from Bookends, 19 Castle Street, Carlisle, and 66 Main Street, Keswick, and from www.bookscumbria.com